Tax Day/Fast Food Day/Rubber Eraser Day/Freak-out Day/Bengali New Year/World Grits Festival (South Carolina)
2005-04-15 @ 9:34 p.m.

Mr Purvis has been sick since yesterday, so that was half of today's raison d'être gone. It didn't help that half the class was absent, so Mr Batchelor just told us to discuss Directive among ourselves, before he goes through it next week. So we plonked ourselves down in one big group at Dan's corner of the classroom and had a cool conversation. Cool, in the sense that it's been a long time since we had a bunch of us together talking about something, along with the obligatory random deviations like the discussion I had with the three girls on foie gras and sharks' fin soup. I really like Directive! It's one of those Frost poems that strike me as justifying his poetic greatness, like To Earthward. Directive reminds me of Tolkien, especially the Cottage of Lost Play from The Book Of Lost Tales. That was the one thing that impressed itself upon me most as I read the poem, aside from the bizarre communist reading that has some tenuous support. There's just something about Directive, which I can't pin down with certainty as yet, that makes it an arresting poem for not a few of us in class. Dissenting voices like Thong's will be ignored. Interestingly, Dan and I agree about Frost, for once.

Lunch wasn't too bad, at least we avoided Food Junction because Dan wasn't around to suggest it. As much as frugality is an admirable character trait, it is not one that I would wish to possess to such an extent. I miss the days when Hollland Village was just a short walk away from school, and I could drag people there more than half the time. We bought Allen a slice of cake because it was his birthday, then it was back to school at an hour when the first few bunches of students were drifting towards Junction 8. Incidentally, the right lens that has been cracking steadily has finally broken. Happened about an hour or so before English 'S', so it was too much trouble to go home and get my spare pair of glasses. Wandered around for the rest of the day in a slightly blurred universe. You don't realise how debilitating it is to not have perfect clarity until it's gone. Thank God Mr McConnell's lecture today was heavy on speech, light on transparencies!

Popped down to Kinokuniya with Claudia and Thong after 'S' Paper, because vocalists don't have to be at POP! practice today. I originally intended to go after a brief stop at Kinokuniya, but we spent so much time there, and later at Borders, that it didn't make sense to travel down to church for a one-hour practice with the musicians. My eyes were hurting anyway. Had dinner at Nooch, and Bali Hai is a lovely drink! Claudia originally suggested Big O or NYDC, but both were fairly packed and too expensive. Settled on Nooch because it was the second last day before their lease at Wheelock Place expired, so we all agreed it was a sign that we had to eat there. Company was good, snarky, and thoroughly enjoyable. (We have to do it again sometime soon!) It's amazing how the dynamics of a group change when you alter the composition ever so slightly, say by taking out or adding one person. I feel that a lot these days when I'm with my class. It's like an electric crackle in the air that you don't want to acknowledge, but you feel it nonetheless.